Rolling Stone

Herve

"Cheap Thrills"

Jacko didn't get his twenty-fifth-anniversery version of Thriller out, so our man Herve (what? You don't know London's hottest DJ?) stepped in with this Justice-ified track,which peak with a big 'ol Thriller sample. All that's missing is Vincent Price and a pair of crazy contact lenses.

- Rolling Stone 1040 (Nov. 29, 2007)

After 10 years I am ending my subscription of Rolling Stone. There was a time when they covered electronic music. Sure the coverage was not as deep as the dedicated magazines, but it was there. I first heard of Mathew Dear through them. Over time the coverage has slowly eroded from a passing nod to nothing and along with so has my interest in pop music.

I have found that I am reading less and less about the new bands that they cover and completely skipping the coverage of hip-hop. So when I read the above quote it was the straw that broke the camel's back. How can anyone know about the electronic scene if there is actually no coverage? Even when a DJ / producer like Switch is involved with a main stream act such as M.I.A. the only reference to him is that the beats he produced will probably hinder her ability to be mainstream. This is despite the fact that Switch had a banner year and tore up the charts.

One problem I had was that for the longest time I didn't know what I could replace Rolling Stone with. I was not aware of any magazines on the electronic side that covered art, culture, politics, and music, although mainstream, like Rolling Stone does. In the end I think I have a replacement, Xlr8r. I bought an issue of the news stand and loved it. They cover everything from electronic to punk and even include a CD with the mag if you subscribe (why can't Rolling Stone do that?) Let's see what happens.

- Charles Cushman